March 2011 Archives

There's a downtown L.A. park under construction between Bunker Hill and City Hall, and one of the best places to get an overall glimpse is from the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, L.A.'s opera hall.

Here's a recent, if rainy, view from the fourth floor balcony level overlooking Grand Avenue. The nosebleed tier provides a better view of the construction than the swells get. That's the County Hall of Administration in the background.

Chandler, you may recall, was nicknamed Buff because of her maiden name, Buffum, and yes, her family owned the Buffum's department store chain.

The $56 million Grand Avenue Civic Park, set to open in May 2012, will include "lawns, performance spaces, seating areas, walking paths, vegetation, an upgraded fountain and even a dog park," says the L.A. Downtown News.

Spotted on Upland's portion of Central Avenue, an intriguing mix of tenants. Any ideas for the vacant spaces?

Seen in Chino on Grove Avenue at Eucalyptus, a request for "clean dirt." Good luck with that.

On the streets of Mexico City, a few blocks from the Zocalo, I saw this hip-high figure outside a restaurant. I took a photo because it looked awfully familiar.

And sure enough, there's a chef's figure on the counter at Nancy's Cafe in Rancho Cucamonga, not to mention a life-sized version outside the Local Baker in Upland. They're almost as prolific as garden gnomes.

Not long after being sent a photo of Restaurant Chino by a reader visiting the Dominican Republic, I was strolling in Mexico City and found Restaurante Los Angeles. That's a nice Dodger blue awning. I didn't check the menu to see if they serve bacon-wrapped hot dogs.

I recently posted photos here from Teotihuacan, seen on my Mexico City vacation. Friday's column is about my visit to Xochimilco, a village within Mexico City.

First, here's the San Bernardino de Siena church, where a bell ringer is about to go to work.

Colorful boats known as trajineras are lined up at an embarcadero.

A boatman uses a pole to guide a trajinera along a canal. It's the only way to travel.

A boat of mariachis draws alongside a trajinera to play.

A couple of the homes nestled along the canal banks, almost hidden among the trees.

Sign on the men's room at the plant nursery where we stopped. 'Nuff said. The women's room sign was more demure.

A view of the plant nursery.

And here's our boat, waiting for us at the plant nursery. There was just a short trip from here back to the embarcadero, ending a pleasant two-hour cruise.

Proving once again that there's a local angle to everything, Elizabeth Taylor, who died Wednesday at age 79, once filmed a movie in the Inland Valley.

Specifically, "Sweet Bird of Youth," a made-for-TV movie from 1989 in which the 57-year-old Taylor costarred with Mark Harmon in an adaptation of a Tennessee Williams play. It was Taylor's last significant role.

Filming took place over two days, May 11 and 12, 1989, in downtown Upland, which stood in for a 1950s Florida town. Some 140 local extras were part of the production.

Were you one of them? Did any of you witness the filming or watch the movie? What did you see?

An apartment complex in Pomona promises a window upgrade that sounds needlessly aggressive. I've heard of window valances, but window violences?

(Aaron Burr's infliction of pain during a duel with Alexander Hamilton can be studied here.)

Tuesday brings the annual State of the City event for Upland.

The luncheon's centerpiece is newly appointed Mayor Ray Musser giving a speech with an update and a look ahead from City Hall for the year.

Any predictions?

In Montclair, the CompUSA building at 9059 Central Ave. at Moreno Street, vacant since 2007, is preparing for a new, non-retail tenant: a very large Asian-themed restaurant. Paradise Buffet will occupy 14,000 square feet and seat 300, according to City Hall.

CLOSED APRIL 2011

Buckboard BBQ and Grill, 1386 E. Foothill Blvd. (at Grove), Upland

Opened in 1991, Buckboard BBQ occupies a spot in the Red Hill Center largely occupied by automotive shops. I've been there a few times over the years, pleasantly, and returned a couple of times recently due to tire repair. Drop off your car at lunchtime, eat at Buckboard, pick up your car. I recommend it.

The restaurant is bright and clean and sports a cowboy motif, going along with its name. You order at the counter and they bring your food to you.

Off the express lunch menu, I had the pork rib special ($7; drink extra). It arrives in a basket with fresh cut fries, slaw and three ribs. They were short, about six inches long, but meaty, trimmed in St. Louis style and with only a squirt of sauce on each. Good meal.

The meats are smoked Santa Maria style over hickory. I'm no devotee of regional barbecuing but you're free to compare Buckboard to Red Hill BBQ across Grove and report back.

Next visit I had the barbecue chicken sandwich combo with fries and soda ($5). It made for a light, inexpensive lunch.

I hear the tri-tip is especially good and ought to get that next time, hopefully without the side of tire trouble.

Find the menu on Buckboard's website.

Friday's column is about my experience in Teotihuacan outside Mexico City. Above is the Pyramid of the Moon, the smaller of the two pyramids.

Above is the larger Pyramid of the Sun.

World's best Stairmaster.

You have to scrabble up a mound to get to the summit.

From the summit, the Pyramid of the Moon looks small.

If this looks steep, it is.

Yep, there's a vacancy at Rancho Cucamonga's New Kansan Motel, all right: between the O and the E.

Ron and Lori Kunzi found this dumb and dumber sign behind the Talent Factory in Chino.

A few vacation photos. I'll run more soon.

One of the eye-popping murals from UNAM, the National Autonomous University of Mexico. This is a tiled fresco on all four sides of the Central Library, done by Juan O'Gorman and depicting 400 years of Mexican history.

Below, the entrance to the Frida Kahlo Museum in Coyoacan, in the very blue house where she and Diego Rivera lived.

Below that, strollers in Park de Mexico, one of the city's woodsy parks.

Cyclists come out in droves on the last Sunday of the month.

The National Palace, the seat of the federal government, is on one side of the expansive plaza known as the Zocalo.

A colorful scene inside one of the city's mercados.

Thursday was my 14th anniversary at the Daily Bulletin, and today is my 47th birthday. I'm going to celebrate by attending an Upland council meeting tonight. No rest for the wicked (a category that may include the Upland council).

Photo: Crayton Harrison

Even amidst the bustle of Paseo de la Reforma in Mexico City, vacationing columnist David Allen's attention is held by the news out of Upland, a city currently undergoing some "reforma" of its own.

Friday's column is the first of three or four I expect to write about Mexico City. If you've ever been there, what did you think?

Seen Thursday on Foothill Boulevard west of Hellman and east of Big Lots, a strawberry patch is being plowed under for a minimall. Whew! I'd been worried Rancho Cucamonga didn't have enough of those.

* The grower tells me that despite the sign and construction fence, the activity relates solely to the Hellman Avenue pipeline project a few yards away. OK, we can stand down.

Books acquired: "The Female Man," Joanna Russ; "The Best of Stanley G. Weinbaum"; "Blade Runner" (movie adaptation), Les Martin; "They Live," Jonathan Lethem; "Secret Stairs," Charles Fleming; "Juliet, Naked," Nick Hornby.

Books read: "Return to the Planet of the Apes Nos. 1, 2 and 3," William Arrow; "The Return of Tarzan," Edgar Rice Burroughs; "The Return of Sherlock Holmes," A. Conan Doyle; "The Return of Fu Manchu," Sax Rohmer.

There were many happy returns last month, in the sense that all six books I read had the word "return" in the title. Oh, I crack myself up.

On the bright side, I've plowed through 12 books in two months. On the down side, this was a particularly lightweight month from a literary standpoint, unless I get points for reading three books from a century ago.

I won't belabor my choices, most of which were indefensible. The elephant in the room, or really the gorilla in the room, is that I read three novelizations of a "Planet of the Apes" animated series, which I happened to be watching on DVD. (The Apes are one of my guilty pleasures.) Part way through the series I remembered I'd picked up these three books in 2007. If I were ever going to read them, this was the logical time. So I read one per weekend, as quickly as possible.

This might represent the nadir of my serious reading life. I'll have to get back to Mark Twain soon to recover a few shreds of credibility. Compounding my shame, the show and the books were kind of fun.

As for the century-old stuff, the Fu sequel was okay, the Tarzan sequel quite good (if you've read the first one, you should at least read the second, which ties off the loose ends neatly) and the sixth Holmes collection was also great.

For those who care, I've carried the Holmes book since boyhood and bought the rest in the past decade at various used bookstores.

What have you been reading? Other than in quantity, surely I've made most of you look good this month. No need to thank me. Just doing my job.

Upland native Matt Krupnick found a bit of home while vacationing in the Dominican Republic.

A new Montclair mattress store's name would seem to promise a smooth, uninterrupted eight-hour ride through Slumberland. Jet-lagged from vacation, I would love to board the sleep train. Perhaps the dining car serves warm milk.

A couple of under-seen art pieces from the 1960s popped up recently in the Pomona Council Chambers. Both are by Claremont artist Betty Davenport Ford.

Up top is "Pigeons," a bronze cast of a piece that was once located on West Second Street and dated to the Pedestrian Mall days. The original was stolen from Second and Gordon streets in the 1970s. A new version was cast in 2003 at the behest of the Vehicle Parking District board but was never displayed until now. It's on a table to the right of the council dais.

At right is "Gazelle." The stone and clay work was once also displayed at Second and Gordon as part of a fountain, but I believe the fountain was taken out when Gordon was closed. "Gazelle" grazed in the City Hall lobby the past few years until its recent leap to the Council Chambers foyer, where it stands nobly under the thermostat.

A half-dozen other art pieces, from tile mosaics to cast bronze statues, remain as part of the fountains dotting East and West Second Street.

I left on furlocation Feb. 25 and returned Saturday. (More on this later.)

What did I miss? Answer the question however you like.